In order to facilitate the creation and maintenance of a broad spectrum of electronic documents, a similarly broad spectrum of computer applications known as electronic document applications has been developed. Electronic document applications include word processors, spreadsheets, slideshow presentation applications, and web publishing applications, among others. These applications are often bundled together in the form of a productivity suite, such as Microsoft® Office.
One problem that has plagued users of productivity suites for some time is the inconsistency of appearance of objects when imported from one application into another. For example, importing a table from a word processor into a presentation application may cause the resulting table to look markedly different than it did prior to the import. As a further example, moving a graphical shape from a presentation program into a spreadsheet document often causes the resulting shape to have different attribute settings. The resulting object may have different line widths, different fill levels, and other graphical effects that diverge from the original upon import, causing the finished product to look different than intended.
Another problem common to electronic document applications relates to the creation of new content. Users must typically decide between an often-sparse selection of supplied document templates and choosing stylistic attribute values by hand. The former is disadvantageous because the finished product often lacks distinctiveness. The latter is disadvantageous because finding an acceptable combination of stylistic attributes values may involve considerable trial and error.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.